That would explain terms like "great" and "truth" where there seemed little need for them._________________"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

That would explain terms like "great" and "truth" where there seemed little need for them.

Hello Diarmid,

Proselytization? I assure you that I'm not out to change your faith about ITIL. As I wrote in my response to John, there are many good things in ITIL. Why ignore them?

Evangelism? If anything, I preach what most people on this forum preach: "common sense." There are many options to consider when looking for a solution, not just ITIL. This is especially true given the widely known fact that ITIL does not cover all areas of IT or business.

Good configuration management is usually a function of great data governance

the word great in this statement marks it out as some kind of "sales" or "inspiration" talk and robs the sentence of anything tangible it might have had. I believe it is the more tangible aspects that this forum focusses on.

For example: "the quality of data governance is interdependent with the quality of the configuration management system" or the even simpler: "you'll do better with configuration management if you also pay attention to data governance" - if these were not something like you intended, then I can make a sentence to match your point if you explain it to me. And I'm sure that you can do so even better.

I'm afraid that faith is not a word I would use in my attitude to ITIL. Especially since v3 (the text of which I have never read, although I understand much of it from discussions both here and on LinkedIn), it seems to be going in a wrong direction, or perhaps trying to go in too many directions and it over-sells itself. In particular, its claim to be a framework is either wrong or misunderstood, because it is only at an abstract descriptive level that it can be said to offer that advantage. But what we have is lots of people thinking its detail is "the" way to do things, i.e. they treat it as prescriptive.

Thus you get debates about whether the need to reset a password is essentially indicative of an incident, a change or the result of a service request, because people want to fit it into an "ITIL" box. On LinkedIn there are lengthy debates on this and other matters in which people quote ITIL text as gospel.

I suspect (indeed I know) that much of the advice I offer is "heretic" to such people. What I offer is thought out in the context of the question, based on my experience and knowledge and insight, almost always without reference to ITIL text and only rarely with reference to ISO20000 text.

So if I was being negative, perhaps it was resentment that you, with your wealth of experience and insight, and backed by your own body of knowledge, would waste pixels with "...great...".

The issue of senior management struggling to understand ITIL is that they should never have to even see ITIL (unless they are senior IT management in which case they should be sacked if they cannot grasp such obvious stuff). Nobody should ever "do ITIL" as a project; they should do service improvement. The justification for expenditure should never be "ITIL"; it should always be service improvement. In these respects it is exactly the same as "doing" ISO9000. Quality management is never about the word quality; ITIL is never about the word ITIL.

End of rant. Sorry._________________"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

Good configuration management is usually a function of great data governance

the word great in this statement marks it out as some kind of "sales" or "inspiration" talk and robs the sentence of anything tangible it might have had. I believe it is the more tangible aspects that this forum focusses on.

For example: "the quality of data governance is interdependent with the quality of the configuration management system" or the even simpler: "you'll do better with configuration management if you also pay attention to data governance" - if these were not something like you intended, then I can make a sentence to match your point if you explain it to me. And I'm sure that you can do so even better.

If I used a term that is unappealing to you, then I apologize. I could have used "good" or "strong" or "excellent" or some other word. However, the point is that no one will ever succeed at Configuration Management (as ITIL defines it or in any other form) without superior efforts to help create, collect, and maintain the data that is critical to the process. This, in a nutshell, is exactly what Data Governance (DG) is about. It's not a sales pitch as I am certainly not trying to sell any DG solutions. It's a simple fact. DG is what helps you avoid (or at least minimize) the scenario of "garbage in = garbage out", which is extremely important to the success of CMS and any CMDB.

Diarmid wrote:

I'm afraid that faith is not a word I would use in my attitude to ITIL. Especially since v3 (the text of which I have never read, although I understand much of it from discussions both here and on LinkedIn), it seems to be going in a wrong direction, or perhaps trying to go in too many directions and it over-sells itself. In particular, its claim to be a framework is either wrong or misunderstood, because it is only at an abstract descriptive level that it can be said to offer that advantage. But what we have is lots of people thinking its detail is "the" way to do things, i.e. they treat it as prescriptive.

Thus you get debates about whether the need to reset a password is essentially indicative of an incident, a change or the result of a service request, because people want to fit it into an "ITIL" box. On LinkedIn there are lengthy debates on this and other matters in which people quote ITIL text as gospel.

I understand. I would point out that this is the part where we always do our best to advise others to always take great care in recommendations that come from any source. As I stress repeatedly... There is good and bad in everything that is published as a source for solutions options.

Would you believe if I told you that one of our greatest source of followers comes from many that are disappointed in ITIL and other available solutions options? However, even in our case, our material is far from complete and we do our best to make sure everyone understands this.

Diarmid wrote:

I suspect (indeed I know) that much of the advice I offer is "heretic" to such people. What I offer is thought out in the context of the question, based on my experience and knowledge and insight, almost always without reference to ITIL text and only rarely with reference to ISO20000 text.

This sounds like "wisdom" (some of us call this "battle scars"), which I believe always trumps blind faith.

Diarmid wrote:

So if I was being negative, perhaps it was resentment that you, with your wealth of experience and insight, and backed by your own body of knowledge, would waste pixels with "...great...".

Your point is understood. Please keep understand that I personally use words like I did to keep things positive, especially for those who search for assistance in times of need. I don't want to discourage people from what they're doing so I try not to be negative or create confrontation. I apologize if I sometimes come across as "Salesy". Form many years, now, I've been in the position of constantly trying to sell solutions, whether it be to my leadership, my staff, or even my customers, so it is probably a habit at this point.

Diarmid wrote:

The issue of senior management struggling to understand ITIL is that they should never have to even see ITIL (unless they are senior IT management in which case they should be sacked if they cannot grasp such obvious stuff). Nobody should ever "do ITIL" as a project; they should do service improvement. The justification for expenditure should never be "ITIL"; it should always be service improvement. In these respects it is exactly the same as "doing" ISO9000. Quality management is never about the word quality; ITIL is never about the word ITIL.

End of rant. Sorry.

The only thing I'd add to this last part is that we should always keep in mind that our own priorities are not always the priorities of others and that, when running an enterprise, there are never any perfect solutions and always many trade-offs based on priorities.

After spending many years doing this stuff, trust me that I get it. However, after spending the last 7-ish years running my own companies, I can say that I understand why so many leaders, with limited funds and resources to get things done, find it easy to throw best practices (and many times even lower priority common sense) to the side of the road in favor of getting other higher priority things done.